About the E-Rate Celebration
NCTET is thrilled to host the 20th Anniversary of E-Rate Celebration to honor the individuals and organizations that have made a significant impact on its success. This invitation-only Celebration will be held on Wednesday, January 24, 2018 at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The Celebration will include over 200 attendees from the private and public technology and education arenas.
In addition to coming together for an evening reception, NCTET will host an E-Rate Summit on Capitol Hill bringing together advocates and beneficiaries of E-Rate to discuss past success and future potential. We expect participation from U.S. Senators, Members of Congress, FCC Commissioners and Education Leaders at both the E-Rate Summit and Celebration.
The History of E-Rate
The E-Rate is part of the federal universal service program, a support mechanism that was created in 1934 to ensure that rural consumers had affordable phone service. Championed by a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators and Representatives and authorized under the Telecommunications Act of 1996, E-Rate provides public and private schools and public libraries with deep discounts on broadband, Internet access services and internal Wi-Fi. In order to meet growing demand for E-Rate support, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) increased E-Rate’s annual funding cap to $3.9 billion in 2014. E-Rate funds are not appropriated, but are fees collected (along with other universal service programs) from consumer phone bills.
Since its implementation in 1998, E-Rate played a major role in ensuring that nearly all public school classrooms and libraries had basic Internet connectivity. In 2014, the FCC approved its E-Rate Modernization Order, which sought to ensure that all schools and libraries have not just basic Internet connectivity but sufficient bandwidth for students and patrons to make use of the wealth of educational resources, tools and services available online. To meet this goal, the FCC focused E-Rate funding on ensuring that all schools and libraries meet high bandwidth benchmarks for robust Wi-Fi connectivity. An Education Superhighway study showed that schools are already making significant progress on improving classroom Wi-Fi connections, with the percentage of classrooms meeting Wi-Fi connectivity targets growing from 30% in 2013 to 88% in early 2017. Further, after receiving virtually no internal connections funding since the beginning of the program, libraries received $10 million for Wi-Fi in 2016.
The 2014 E-Rate Modernization Order also opened new opportunities for rural and remote schools and libraries to gain access to high-speed external fiber connections by allowing them to receive E-Rate support for special construction charges and modulating electronics associated with leasing dark fiber; and for building and owning their own high-speed networks. The Order also encouraged improved school and library external connections by allowing them to receive additional support from the E-Rate program when their states contribute additional support for broadband. Recent surveys suggest that these changes coupled with increased pricing transparency have helped lower bandwidth costs from an average of $22/mbps in 2013 to $7/mbps in 2016.
Thank You to Our Supporters:
NCTET’s E-Rate Summit & Celebration is made possible because of the generosity of our supporters. If you are interested in joining these sponsors, please contact NCTET’s E-Rate Anniversary team at jennifer@wolcotthillgroup.com.
